Discussion That Made Me Think

[UnKnown-Self]

i was talking to my daughter yesterday and I was saying how much I love living alone and some of the reasons.
She said it sounded like H was very critical and controlling. But he really wasn't. I was so conditioned by the time I met him I was very submissive and would rarely speak my opinion. I was such a totally foreign world of support and caring, kindness and thoughtfulness that every little curtesy was given much more significance then it really had. It was beyond my understanding of how people treated each other in a relationship.
Things didn't stay so rosey but I did learn a different side of life.
It's not until now that I am living on my own and now making my own decisions that I realized how much of myself I squashed. He decided when we shopped, what went where in the apartment, and except for the last two years, what purchases were made. It wasn't so much of his demanding but my lack of an opinion out of ignorance and beyond lack of self esteem, it was a lack of self.
I look forward to finding myself.

 

[Ava Jarvis]

:hug:

Hooray for self discovery!

I had an extremely controlling and abusive father. My mother acted in accordance with him. It really went right down into the bones. So I understand some of this.

When I was free it was pretty exhilarating. Heck, even when I only got partial freedom through getting away from them for small amounts of time in college, that was pretty awesome too.

I visited the comic book shop every day until that got old, heh.

Hope you get to do the same sort of stuff! :)

 

[mary1979]

When I was with the kids Dad, I had to decide EVERYTHING.
He took absolutely no responsibility for a single thing even in his own life, leaving me to manage everything, from where we lived to how the kids would be raised.

This guys now 40 and has never once had a drivers licence for example, he didnt even have a bank account for 30 years and its very unlikely even to this day that he knows how to pay a utility bill. Our youngest child is in grade 5 and he doesn't even know where her school is, not even the suburb lol
The true definition of an adult child.

I was so worn out from handling 4 kids, one with the propensity to drink heavily and wind up in prison frequently, that after 15 years when it was all over, even basic decisions like what to have for dinner would seem beyond my scope.

My husband on the other hand, is an only child who's been a bachelor for much of his 37 years. He has been responsible for himself since he was about 17, and never relied on anyone.

You cannot even begin to comprehend the relief I felt in handing over control of all the decisions that plagued me day to day for a little while and just let him take the steering wheel.

Just one problem.
When he left I realised I couldn't drive in the dark anymore, or find my way to my best friends house.
I was never great at discipline, so my youngest went totally feral.

I went from one extreme to the next.
Do things by halves? Not me.

Think I've found the happy medium finally now at 37, but my youngest could still use a kick in the pants for her potty mouth.

 

[Bigray79]

When I was with the kids Dad, I had to decide EVERYTHING.
He took absolutely no responsibility for a...

I sort her out